


Hurt For Me

by likeporcelain



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, In which a religious well-off country girl falls for a lowly farm boy, Memory Loss, POV Third Person, R Plus L Does Not Equal J, Romance, Setting: 1934 Wyoming, Soulmates, no magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 10:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18134519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeporcelain/pseuds/likeporcelain
Summary: In the months after a head injury wiped five years from her memory, good country girl, Daenerys Targaryen, struggles to interpret and later accept feelings she has for her family’s lowly farm hand, Jon Snow.(Title comes from "Hurt For Me" by SYML)





	Hurt For Me

**Author's Note:**

> So this story sort of jumped into my brain last week and I immediately sat down and wrote it out. Two days later, it was finished and now I'm posting it asap so that I can finally do all the schoolwork I should have been doing while writing this lol. It's a romance. It's angsty - if you want to know just how ansgty it is, I'm a poor judge of that, but I did cry a lot while writing it. It's pretty OOC and I acknowledge that - sometimes fic writing is less about recreating your fave characters and more about letting your fave characters inspire your work (so don't come at me). I've rated it for Teens & Older because there are a couple of lines that are just too saucy for a General rating, but all in all it's pretty tame. Also, Dany is a very religious person in this fic, so if religion is a big turn-off for you then keep that in mind - no, I'm not religious, this is just how to story evolved. 
> 
> I'm so excited, though! Because I really love this story and usually I post with a lot more trepidation. With that being said, if you, for whatever reason, do not like this story, please try to keep your comments courteous or simply back out of the fic and wipe its existence from your memory. I hope most of you will enjoy it, though. Yeehaw (:

The dry Wyoming heat was stifling the Summer of 1934, and Dany awoke from her nap slick with a sheen of sweat about her brow and bosom. She napped frequently. A lingering side-effect of the accident six months prior was that she tired often and when she would forget to prop her bedroom window open before drifting off, this was the result. 

It was already mid-day and her tutor would be by soon for her piano lessons. She laced up her shoes and brought down her hair so that she could fix it all up anew. She then went to the washroom where she wet a rag with cool water and dabbed at her face, neck and arms. It was a struggle always not to stand too long before the mirror. In her mind she was still nineteen, but the accident took five years from her memory and twenty-four was old for a country girl. She ought to have been married by now, keeping her own home and raising babies at her breast. There had been a number of boys from school who she had taken interest in, but in the time she’d lost, they had all either up and left for the city or had already settled down with new families like young country men did. 

Dany lifted her burgundy skirt above her ankles as she descended the stairs. As soon as she rounded into the kitchen, she was startled frozen at the sight of her 50-year-old mother, Rhaella, taking tea at the table with one of the farm hands, Jon Snow, half her mother’s age. This was an often occurrence and Dany balked at the special attention Rhaella paid the young man over the others. It wasn’t proper. Her face grew a pale white. 

“Mother,” she exclaimed, announcing her presence. 

Both heads turned from their conversation. Her mother smiled wide like there was nothing at all odd about this arrangement and Jon looked at Dany like he always did, a way that made her shiver. She didn’t like him and his way of looking at her. His dark eyes staring so curiously, his mouth slightly ajar as if about to speak but never finding the words. He was dumb, that’s all Dany could figure. And what sort of need would her mother have for taking tea with a dumb young man?

“Honey, are you hungry?” asked Rhaella, standing and hurrying to the china cabinet to retrieve a third cup. “I made biscuits!” 

When Jon made no move to stand, Dany cast him a stone-faced stare. “Don’t you have work that needs doing?”

“Dany, be nice,” Rhaella scolded her gently. 

“That’s alright, ma’am,” said Jon, finally standing. He was sweaty, too, from the heat and from working all morning. He enjoyed his tea times with Rhaella, though. The closest thing to a mother an orphan like he could imagine. He knew it bugged Dany whenever she would catch him inside, but he’d been through that dance so many times before he had the steps memorized. “I should be gettin’ back to it. Thanks for the biscuits.”

He picked his hat up from where it hung on the hook beside the window. It made his scalp hot and his hair greasy, but it kept the sun out of his eyes while he heard up the sheep. 

Sauntering slowly, he stopped just before Dany and asked “How’re you feelin’?”

She took a step back from him, thinking that if her father were still around and he saw a farm hand standing so close to his daughter, he’d have had the boy thrown out of town. “I’m feeling just fine,” she replied coolly, though inwardly, Jon always seemed to prompt a tightening in her chest. It was almost like suffocating at times. She’d taken to simply staying away from him as much as she could. 

“Glad to hear it,” he said with one of his kindly smiles that Dany didn’t trust. There was something about those smiles of his, like they meant something else. 

After he’d gone, Dany marched up to her mother who was fixing another kettle. “Mother, it is not proper for you to be so familiar with the help. What would father say?”

Rhaella’s eyes rolled. “You’re being ludicrous, Dany. He comes in for tea every now and again. He’s a good man. You’d see that if you gave him half the chance.”

“He smells,” Dany stated defiantly. 

“You smell,” replied Rhaella. “Fall asleep with the window shut again?”

Blushing madly, Dany tucked her head down to sniff at her shoulder. Maybe she wasn’t fresh as daisies but she still smelled like an indoor woman. A touch of perfume was all she needed. 

“All I’m saying is that father wouldn’t approve. I thought you minded that.”

“Honey, your father liked him,” insisted Rhaella with something sad in her voice as she touched her daughter’s arm. “I wish you could remember how soft your father was in his final years. You did that, you know. You softened his heart with your strong will.”

It pained Dany to hear this. The man who raised her was a hard man, not soft. He threw books and snapped rulers. He praised the Lord with a cigar in his mouth and he rode his stallions with a top hat perched firm upon his head. A ranch man of sophistication, he was, and the whole town knew it as fact. He made sure everything looked right in the home and was done right on the land, no excuses. Dany did not miss these qualities of her father. She only longed for the years that her mother spoke of, the ones where he settled down and learned how to love without anger. Maybe that was why he had allowed Dany to go unmarried into her twenties and why he let the farm hand take tea in the house. But the accident took those memories from her. In her mind, her father was still living, seated in his favorite chair by the fire, croaking commands to his women. 

Dany’s tutor arrived, an elderly woman and musical scholar. They went to the sitting room where a mahogany upright piano sat under a long window overlooking the pasture. A breeze wafted in and rustled the loose tresses of her white-blonde hair as she sat and uncovered the keys. Dany suspected that she had been better before the accident. She had never forgotten her passion for music, but she feared she lost much of her skill. 

To warm up, Dany’s tutor would instruct her to play something from the heart, to loosen up her fingers before lessons. 

“Anything,” the old woman said. “Listen to what you’re feeling and express it through your fingertips onto the keys. Some would say this is the only true way to play the piano.”

Dany despised these exercises, though her tutor refused to call them exercises at all. Dany wanted her playing to be perfect and nothing so random could be perfect. Her fingers would slip. She would press the wrong note. She would flounder and it would anger her so much that she would slam the piano shut on occasion, refusing to even touch it again for a full day. 

“Just give it a try,” her tutor coaxed. 

Shutting her eyes, Dany took in a few breaths and wondered of a melody that had been stuck in her head for weeks but which she had been too nervous to play aloud. Placing her fingers on the keys in a formation she had never attempted before but which felt natural, Dany began to play the song in her head. 

Outside, Jon was standings just between the barn and the house, scraping muck off the bottoms of his boots when he heard the piano notes form a sequence that caused him such heartache. A song he hummed every night as he fell asleep beneath a quilt his former lover had stitched. 

How could she be playing that song? Jon wondered. Not until Dany’s hands left the keys did Jon’s paralysis subside and he was able to force himself back to his work. 

Weeks went by and Dany couldn’t stop playing that tune on the piano. She’d refined it with her instructor and wrote down the notes in her music book. The heat got so bad on the day she did so that the ink would smudge from the droplets of sweat that would roll down her nose. Tired of the season, she decided to title this new song _Dreams of Spring_. 

One Saturday morning, Jon drove up to the house in a shiny new Ford truck and beeped the horn twice. Dany came reluctantly down to the porch and watched as Jon showed her mother around the machine. Though Dany wished not to be, she was fascinated. She’d never seen a thing like it up close. Almost nobody in town had a vehicle in 1929 but by 1934, it seemed every family had one. Even the farm hands had them now. 

“Come see!” Rhaella called out to her daughter. 

Posture square and nose high, Dany approached the automobile with caution, wary of it suddenly destabilizing and lurching into her. She had already survived one near-fatal accident, she did not wish to repeat the process. 

The front was a sloped curve leading to a boxed passenger compartment. A long trough proceeded it, large enough to stack a dozen hay bales at least. The thing was pitch black, as were many of the other automobiles Dany had seen carrying on down the road. She was in awe, peering inside the driver’s window and wondering what it would be like to be inside such a contraption. 

“Want to go for a ride?” Jon asked, startling Dany out of her reverie. 

“Of course not,” she replied in a huff, offended by the question. 

Rhaella stepped close to Dany and said “It would be good for you to get out of the house for a bit, don’t you think?”

Dany was aghast by her mother’s suggestion. “You aren’t serious, mother? I can’t just ride in a truck with a man. What if someone saw?”

“You’re not a teenager anymore, Dany. It’s alright if you spend time with boys.”

Her cheeks turned pink, suddenly feeling the shame of her age. Her mother had given up so much hope that Dany might marry a suitable man that she was ready to pass her off to a mere farm hand. Why did she think so little of me? Dany asked herself. She felt she could cry. 

From behind Rhaella, Jon said “Just around the farm at least? I’ve got the windows down. The breeze will feel nice.”

He looked so hopeful and so did Rhaella. Dany wanted to sink right into the earth below her feet. Her heart was beating like a fist punching at her chest trying to break free. 

“It’s alright, Dany,” her mother whispered before pulling Dany into a tight embrace. She held onto her only daughter like she was sending her off to battle. The action only frightened Dany more. 

“Alright, mother,” conceded Dany and she parted from Rhaella to walk confidently toward Jon. “Just around the farm,” she demanded. 

After a single nod, Jon walked around to the passenger door and held it open while Dany climbed in. He yearned to hold her hand as she nearly slipped, but he knew not to touch such a proper young lady. 

Seated up straight, knees pressed together and hands folded in her lap, Dany kept her head straight ahead as Jon turned the truck around and headed toward the main road. It was a bumpy ride rolling over rocks and craters in the dirt. Her stomach did tumbles and Dany feared she might do one herself if Jon wasn’t careful with his driving. 

The road was smoother, though. The wind rushed past the window and Dany leaned close to it to feel it sweep by her face and send her long hair into a frenzy behind her head. 

“It’s nice, ain’t it?” asked Jon loudly. 

She realized then that she’d been smiling and quickly put an end to it, leaning back into the cab. Her eyes betrayed her, though, by straying to Jon. He wasn’t wearing his hat and his dark hair was pulled back behind his head in a knot, a style Dany found peculiar but wasn’t entirely opposed to. She liked that he wore suspenders. Suspenders were proper, her father would say. 

The entire ride only lasted a few minutes before Jon was turning the truck back down the driveway where they’d begun. It wasn’t so bad, Dany thought. It was the first time she’d ever been alone with a man other than her father. She hadn’t even been allowed private talks with the pastor as a girl. As godly as Aerys Targaryen was, it could have been Jesus himself descending from the cross just to recite a secret prayer to his daughter and he still wouldn’t have allowed it. 

“How’d you find it?” Jon asked once he’d wrangled the stick to his right until the truck was at a steady stop. 

“It was nice,” Dany replied with some apprehension. 

“Sort of scary at first?”

She nodded. 

Peering out the windshield, Dany noticed her mother hadn’t waited out for her. She must have gone back inside to fix breakfast. 

“I was wonderin’,” began Jon, “maybe you’d like it if I drove you to church tomorrow.”

Furrowing her eyebrows, Dany treated the proposition skeptically. “You go to church?”

“No, I didn’t grow up to believe, and I know your mother ain’t a church goer either. But you are. Thought you might like a ride rather than walkin’ all that way on your own.”

“I don’t mind walking.”

“I know. Might be nice not to have to for a change, is all I’m sayin’.”

Snapping her head toward him, Dany asked “Did my mother put you up to this?”

At that, Jon was the confused one. “No. If you don’t wanna, that’s fine by me. Just thought it would be nice is all.”

Simmering down, Dany took a big gulp and nodded her head. “Alright. I have to be there by nine o’clock.”

The corners of Jon’s mouth lifted. “I’ll get you there.”

The following day, Dany sat on the front porch in her Sunday clothes for an hour, too anxious to even notice the beauty of the sunrise. It was already half past eight and Jon hadn’t come by. If she started walking now, though, she’d still never make it. If it weren’t for her upbringing, she would have cursed under her breath. 

But then, plumes of dust kicked up along the drive as Jon’s truck came rolling up to the house. 

It was silent between them the whole way to the church house besides Dany continually asking Jon for the time and him answering her after checking his pocket watch. They wouldn’t be late, and Dany knew that by the distance they were making, but always knowing the precise time brought her comfort. 

Jon pulled up by the church steps, stalling the truck but not cutting off the engine. 

“You’re not coming in?” Dany asked, for a moment suggesting that she wished for him to accompany her until she quickly added the question “I mean, you’re not a Christian at all?”

“I used to go when I was real young, but then my parents died and suddenly I didn’t see the point in praisin’ any Gods. Bein’ an orphan teaches you to believe in yourself more than anything else.”

In Dany’s chest was a pang of sympathy. She’d never met anyone who had grown up without parents. She wondered what sort of damage that could do to a man’s psyche. Though it had been a full year since her father’s passing, Dany had thought he was still alive when she awoke as a twenty-four-year-old woman. The loss of her father and the loss of her memories had her questioning the Lord, admittedly. Had she have been a child and lost both of her parents, she imagined her suffering would have been endless. Looking upon Jon now, she wondered how he had ever relearned how to smile. 

“You best be on your way,” Jon told her, wearing that smile. “I’ll be back to pick you up when service ends.”

Dany didn’t protest and after the service, she waited patiently on the front steps, watching out for his new black truck. Some of her old schoolmates, a brother and sister, walked past and bid Dany a blessed morning. Their grandmother, old Olenna Tyrell, stopped to have a more thorough conversation, resting her withered hand upon Dany’s forearm. 

“Sweet child, are you waiting to speak with the pastor?” asked Olenna. 

“I’m waiting for my mother’s farm hand to pick me up so that I won’t have to walk. He got a new truck and offered.” She then looked quickly at the old woman, fearing speculation, and said “Mother told me it was alright. She said it wouldn’t be improper.”

The hand tapped at Dany’s arm reassuringly. “Of course, dear. The farm hand, you say?” There was a twinkle in the woman’s eye, a smile that doubled as a smirk. “Jon Snow, right? Such a kind young man. I am sure you are safe with him, dear.”

“You know him well?” asked Dany, somewhat perplexed. It was a small town, but it was her understanding Jon had only arrived a few years ago. To already make a good impression on the town’s most finicky old woman would be quite a feat. 

“Oh, yes. Darling soul. We met right here in fact.”

“Here at church? He told me he didn’t believe in God.”

Olenna grew flustered, twirling her eyes about as if searching the sky for what to say next. “Well, dear, there are many reasons for which one might find themselves at a church house. I’m an old woman, you have to remember, I can’t keep track of all of these events.” She left Dany then to find where her grandchildren had run off to and Dany continued to wait. 

Soon, Jon’s truck came to a stop in front of the church and once again, Jon was around to hold the door open for Dany before she even reached it. The act made her feel special, like she was an important person or something. For that same reason, she found it somewhat embarrassing and hoped no one else noticed the farm hand helping her into his truck. Rhaella may have liked him, Olenna Tyrell may have liked him, but Dany was still on the fence about this young man who seemed so intent on earning her approval. 

Even so, allowing Jon to drive her to and from church on Sundays was a routine Dany fell naturally into and after the first month, Dany grew to rather enjoy car rides with Jon. Her tummy had gotten used to the bumps and she’d learned how to braid her hair in such a fashion that it would not toss around in a craze as they zipped down the road. 

After her piano lesson one day, Jon walked in the house unannounced and asked Dany if she’d like to get a pop with him in town. At first, Dany found the idea absurd, just as she had first found getting into the vehicle with him in the first place absurd, but Rhaella found it to be a swell idea. It was suspicious to Dany that her mother would prioritize Dany’s socializing with this low-class fellow before his labor duties on the farm. 

“I’ve got three other boys out there all twiddling their thumbs. Let them pick up some slack for a change,” Rhaella retorted. “You go have some fun, Dany.”

The heat in the house had grown unbearable and that was the excuse Dany told herself when she agreed to ride into town with Jon. They went to Crossroads where the kids sat at the counter drinking milkshakes and a group of elders sat at a long table chitchatting away about the heatwave while blotting sweat from their brows with paper napkins. 

While Jon ordered them a couple of Cokes at the counter, Dany noticed a lull in the chitchat and glanced curiously over at the group to see that they had begun to watch her, cheeks full like they were holding their breaths. Quickly, they turned away in a weak attempt to act naturally but it was too late. No matter how much she fanned her face, nothing could bring down the temperature rising underneath Dany’s skin. She felt so foolish for letting her mother convince her this was appropriate, her gallivanting around town with the likes of Jon Snow. 

“Can we go?” Dany asked Jon as soon as he had a glass bottle of Coke in each hand. 

“Of course,” replied Jon and as he followed Dany out the shop door, he threw a look of displeasure over his shoulder, directed at the group of elders. At the car, before opening the passenger door, Jon said “I want to take you someplace, if that’s okay.”

The step she took backwards should have dismayed him, but it had not. 

“There’s a creek around the bend a couple miles down the road. I think you’d like it there. It’s nice and cool under the trees,” he explained. 

Dany’s mouth opened but no words escaped. The question had her flustered.

“I’ll take you back home if you want, but I really do think you’ll like it there.”

Quietly, having lost some of her forced confidence, Dany said “I’ve been there as a girl, I think. My father used to fish out there.”

“Yeah, your father was quite the fisherman,” Jon said with a warm smile, the sun above making the sweat of his cheeks glisten and his eyes shimmer. “I went out there with him quite a few times before he fell ill.”

“You fished with my father?” asked Dany incredulously. She couldn’t imagine her old, stolid father taking a rod and line out with a young, unrefined farm hand. 

She agreed to go to the creek with Jon, dreaming of the shaded trees and tall grass. Jon cracked open her Coke and she began drinking it on the drive there. They past a little white house just on the corner where the road turns off into a dirt path, a little sunny cottage she’d never seen before but found rather cute. She had been having dreams lately of living quaintly in a cute cottage, in the country but by the water, though she knew her father would prefer her on an estate. 

Soon, Jon was shifting the car to a stop and Dany climbed on out without his help. 

Knowing the way, her feet stepped lively over the overgrowth with Jon following silently behind until they reached a clearing half covered by a canopy of trees, the shade ending just where the shore of the creek began. A narrow wooden landing extended out a few yards and that was where she remembered her father would sit for hours waiting for the fish to bite. 

It was nicer here. She took another sip of her Coke, lowered to her knees in the cool grass and sighed contently. 

Jon remained standing behind her for some time, satisfied to watch her be so content. Eventually, though, he approached and knelt to sit beside her. 

“What would you and my father talk about out here for all those hours?” Dany asked, wondering what her father and this man could have possible had in common. 

“Love, mostly.”

Eyes widening, Dany gave him an odd look. 

Jon explained. “He told me about these neighbors he had when he was a kid, a real strange family. The father was a traveling salesman and quite a lout. The mother stayed at home because they had eleven children, all of them as wild as can be. Mr. Targaryen told me about the eldest of those wild children. A beautiful girl with ivory hair named Rhaella. He told me how his parents didn’t approve of Rhaella because of the family she came from, but your father didn’t care. He proposed to her on their first date and she said –”

“What, are you nuts?!” Dany interjected, smiling wide as she contributed to a story she’d heard a dozen times. 

“But, that didn’t deter him. He kept asking her out and after each date he would walk her to her door and say –”

“Are you ready to love me yet?”

Nodding, Jon smiled wistfully and said “It took her four years, but eventually, she was ready and they would spend the next thirty married to each other, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.”

Dany’s smile faded, thinking of her father lying on his death bed, whispering apologies to his wife for not being able to hold on any longer. 

“Do you know what it’s like to be in love?” Jon asked and the question nearly stopped Dany’s heart. She blamed it on the pop. 

“I don’t know,” she answered breathlessly. “I’ve felt love for. . . for my parents, for friends, for the Lord, for the less fortunate.”

Jon’s head turned up toward the leafy branches overhead as he leaned back on an elbow. There was melancholy about him. His chest rose and fell sporadically. His eyelids twitched. 

“Have you?” asked Dany then, suddenly desperate to hear him speak on the subject some more. 

“Have I?”

“Been in love?”

The silence that preceded his answer left Dany numb. 

“Yes,” he soon spoke, eyes trained on hers as he did. 

“What’s it like?”

Finally, a smile reappeared on his face, but his eyes were dark circles floating underneath a sheen of moisture. “It’s as if God himself came down from the heavens to answer my prayers in person.”

Body trembling, Dany meekly asked “What does it feel like?”

“I felt sick.”

“Sick?”

He chuckled something sad. “Yeah. Like someone had grabbed me by the ankles and swung me around a dozen times and then asked me to walk in a straight line. It didn’t happen at once, though. It was gradual. This gradual sickness. I’m bein’ serious, too. I felt ill, like I could throw up at any moment.”

Just hearing Jon speak made Dany sick. “Why?” she asked in disbelief. 

“Because love – real love – it changes you. This seed was planted inside me and it just grew and grew and grew until it was fillin’ up my whole body, changin’ it and makin’ me question everything I’d ever known, everything I’d been taught.”

Near tears, Dany whispered “That sounds terrible.”

Another sullen chuckle and Jon said “It is pretty terrible for a while. But once you’ve accepted it – once you’ve realized that what you feel, they feel too. . . it’s incredible. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I don’t understand,” Dany breathed. Her Coke had toppled in the grass, drowning the soil beneath it. “Where is she?”

His head shook. “You don’t have to worry about her.”

“But I want to know.” 

Rising to his feet, Jon downed the remaining contents of his glass pop bottle and then said “I’ll tell you one day, I promise.”

Dany was flustered and displeased with his answer and her mind was in such a flurry she hadn’t even realized she was touching Jon until her hand was already wrapped tightly in his and he was helping her to her feet. 

Turning his back to her, Jon took a long look at the creek, murky with memories and moments past. “I’ll tell you what, though,” he mused. “This is a great place to be in love. I highly recommend it.” He turned back to smile at Dany, who simply stared her blue eyes at him, so full of questions and feelings she could not begin to express. “Should we get back, now?”

“Wait,” blurted Dany suddenly. “What. . . what did you love about her?”

Hands dug into the pockets of his trousers, Jon pondered on the question for a full minute before he answered “She saw the pieces of me no one else ever did – pieces I never even knew existed. She gave me those pieces of myself.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

The muscles in Jon’s throat contracted harshly. “Why do you think that?”

“Your eyes. You wouldn’t look like this if she was still around. You lost her, didn’t you?”

Jon winced at the accusation, his eyes filling with water. He tugged a sweat stained handkerchief from his pocket and turned away from Dany to save him the humiliation as he pressed the fabric to his cheeks. 

She hated the sight. Despite her unyielding skepticism toward the man, Dany longed not only to be near him, but to touch him, to rest a hand on his shoulder and console him, to pull the silk ribbon from his hair and clean his face. She would not, though. She couldn’t. 

“I’m sorry, Jon,” she spoke softly. “Maybe you could find someone new someday. Maybe you can feel all those things twice. Why couldn’t you?”

Spinning around, Jon passed Dany with his head down at the grass. “I need to get you back,” he told her with cracks in his voice. 

Dany’s eyes followed Jon before her feet could. She felt stuck, like the tall grass had weaved around her ankles and the earth was trying to swallow her like quicksand. Never in her life had she wanted to be so close to someone while also fearing every moment of contact. And for the first time, Dany was left to open her own door and the silence between them on the drive back was excruciating. 

As soon as they got back to the house, Dany ran inside, whipping past her mother like a sharp gust of wind and threw herself upon her bed upstairs. Face buried in her pillow and with no notion as to why, she wept.

Meanwhile, Jon took to smashing his fist against the side of the barn until his knuckles bled. 

“What happened?” Rhaella asked him, short of breath from marching with such haste. 

Cradling his hand, Jon shook his head and said “I took her to the creek.”

“Why? I told you not to push her.”

“I know,” he murmured through his tears, face contorted in pain. He repeated it like a chant. “I know. I know. I know.” And he kept repeating it as Rhaella brought him into her arms and let him cry against her shoulder. 

* * * * *

On the twentieth of August was the livestock auction in Laramie and Jon was gone all day to bid on a mare for Rhaella. He did not return until nearly sundown, hauling a horse trailer behind his truck. Dany had already finished her piano lessons and her readings – it had always been important to her father that she be learned. Education was what separated the upper from the lower class and Aerys would turn in his grave if his daughter did not present herself with sophistication. Dany wanted to read every novel in her father’s study. Sometimes she would read the words and feel a peculiar bite of deja-vu. But she never remembered anything more than the feeling like she’d read these books before. She remembered nothing of the stories and was always surprised by their endings. 

It was just after Dany finished _The Painted Veil_ that Jon’s truck rolled in. She tucked it away in her father’s dusty bookshelf and went down to join Rhaella in viewing the new horse. 

Sun half obscured by the horizon, the distant mountains looked a purple-red and the pastures beyond a shade of amber. Dany and her mother watched as Jon and the other farm hands wrangled the brown beast from the trailer. Jon gently pulled on the bridle to ease the horse across her new land and into the corral. 

“She’s a wild one,” Rhaella speculated. 

The following day, Jon spent all of the morning and into the afternoon working with the horse. Dany found herself stuck in the living room, watching him from the window above the piano. When her lessons, began, it was nearly impossible for Dany to concentrate until her tutor drew the curtains. White lace. It kept the sunlight streaming in as well as the breeze from the opened window but obscured enough of the view that Dany was forced to keep her eyes on her music sheets. 

_Dreams of Spring_ it was written in her own swirling cursive atop the page. Her tutor delighted in hearing her play it, as did her mother. The praise in their eyes was almost too much to bear, but Dany reveled in it as much she could, feeling like she’d finally accomplished something that would make her father just as proud. 

The white lace curtains were not enough to muffle the notes and even as the new mare whinnied and snorted in dismay whenever Jon would try and throw a saddle on her back, he could still hear that song as clearly as the very first time she’d played it for him. 

After her lessons, Dany held in her nerves, picked up her skirt and went out to the pasture to investigate more closely Jon’s progress on the animal. Indeed, she was developing a steady trot alongside him, but if ever Jon made a move too abrupt, she would tug and scamper her feet against the dry dirt. 

Jon soon saw Dany watching him with intrigue, her elbows rested on the gate. He released the mare, letting her alone and he went up to Dany and removed his hat. It was late enough in the day that he did not need it, but he always felt rather naked standing outside without anything to cover his head. The late-afternoon air cooled the sweat from his scalp and made him shiver. 

“You’re good at that,” said Dany. “How did you get so good with horses?”

“I grew up with them,” he replied. 

Cheekily, Dany said “My father would have had that horse yielding by his side by now.”

“Your father and I have a different way of doin’ things. I think it’s important to take your time.”

Jon rested his own elbows atop the gate, so close to Dany she had to step backwards, as if her father were still alive and watching from the windows. Jon took the opportunity to swing the gate open and step out of the corral. 

“That’s probably enough for today,” he said, looking back at the mare. “She’s had a long day.”

“Will you be going home now?” asked Dany, to keep the conversation going. 

“I suppose I should.”

“Where do you live anyway?”

“Remember when I took you to the creek? We past a little white house –”

“That’s your place?”

Jon nodded.

“I’ve never met a farm hand who owned his own property,” Dany exclaimed, quite taken aback. 

“I make decent enough money,” he explained. “I’ve got a little distillery on my property and it makes me quite a bit. People seem to rather like my whiskey.”

“You’re a moonshiner?”

“Prohibition’s over.”

Dany sized him up suspiciously. Every new detail she learned of him did not seem to add up. It was like playing Twenty Questions but she was missing the theme.

“When do you suppose I could ride her?” asked Dany about the horse. 

“I woulda thought you’d be afraid of ridin’ after your accident.”

“Perhaps I should be, but I don’t remember the accident, so how could I fear it?”

Jon smiled in the same way Dany’s mother would whenever she’d play _Dreams of Spring_ and he said “In that case, we should ride together some day.”

Cheeks turning pink, Dany looked toward the barn just to not be looking at him. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head, still mulling over the prospect. While she couldn’t come up with a concrete answer as to why it wouldn’t be proper, Dany couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the suggestion. Before she could form a word to speak, her mother’s voice rang out loudly from the porch. 

“Supper’s ready, Dany! Come on in!”

Dany turned toward the porch but stopped dead in her tracks when Rhaella’s voice shouted out another overwhelming suggestion. 

“Jon, dear, would you like to stay for supper?!”

They ate in the dining room that evening, an unusual event as they typically had their meals in the kitchen. When it was just Dany and her mother, it made less clutter that way, but with Jon joining, Rhaella insisted on them sitting around a fine table cloth. She’d prepared ham and cauliflower and green beans. She always dished out too much for Dany to finish and she did the same with Jon, piling his plate so high he grew nervous for his stomach. 

Just as Jon and Rhaella lifted their forks from the table, Dany cleared her throat and outstretched her hands across the table toward them both. In truth, she rarely ever said grace before a meal anymore. Her father had always initiated it with a quiet sort of aggression and with him gone and Rhaella not a godly woman, it didn’t feel necessary. But tonight, Dany felt compelled to impose her faith upon this dinner – upon Jon specifically. Dany wanted him to feel like he didn’t belong there, that this was her family, her home, her table – the table her father had built with his own hands – and that owning property and bottling liquor did not make him worthy of Dany’s company. 

Jon knew all of this. He’d played this game with her before and had the rule book memorized. Keeping her eye contact, he rested his hand in hers and held it as gentle as he would hold a newly lain egg. 

Rhaella also knew this game and rather hated it, but she played along anyway. 

It wasn’t working, Dany realized too late. The way Jon’s eyes gazed into hers so sweetly and how his fingers so softly encased her palm. His calloused hand radiated a warmth that heated the blood in her veins that moved so rapidly to her heart. 

“Be present at our table Lord. Be here and everywhere adored. These mercies bless and grant that we may feast in fellowship with Thee. Amen.” Her prayer came out humble, as it should always be, but it was not the Lord’s gifts which made Dany so, it was Jon. 

“Amen,” Jon whispered before sliding his hand from Dany’s grasp to retake his fork. 

Dany’s appetite had suddenly left her, replaced by a sickness in her gut. She would retire early that night, as soon as she’d picked enough from her plate to satisfy her mother. Why must being in his presence tax me so? Dany asked her vanity mirror as she sat miserably before it, running a brush through her pale hair. 

The next morning, Dany was still feeling ill and she almost did not come down stairs for morning toast with her mother, but she did anyway, and when she reached the kitchen, Jon was there speaking with Rhaella about something that made the woman very happy. 

“What’s going on?” asked Dany and both heads turned to her. 

“I won’t be able to drive you to church this Sunday, I’m afraid,” Jon told her.

“That’s fine.”

“You see,” he began “there is going to be a wedding that afternoon and I have to prepare for it. It’s my cousin’s wedding and they’re having it on my property last minute.”

“It won’t be a church wedding?”

“Not this one, but the pastor will be there. Much of the town will be there actually. You can come if you’d like. I was just giving your mother a verbal invitation.”

“I shouldn’t go to a wedding of someone I don’t know. It’s not proper,” Dany replied warily, though in truth, the thought of attending one sounded just lovely. 

“You know me,” Jon replied with a gentle confidence. “And as I said, many in town will be there. You won’t feel odd.”

“It sounds nice, Dany,” said her mother. “You love weddings. Won’t you go with me?”

As Dany considered this proposal, she bit heavily on her bottom lip. Then, she agreed, and the matter was settled. Rhaella was so excited and Jon looked it, too. Deep down, Dany supposed she was as well. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been to a wedding, but when her mother said she liked them, not a part of Dany thought to object. 

Sunday rolled around quickly. Jon hadn’t been at the farm in a few days as he prepared his land for the celebration and that made time move by swiftly. Without him, there was nothing to distract Dany from her reading and her chores around the house, and nothing to draw her eye away from her music sheets during her lessons. 

The pastor’s wife came by to give Rhaella and Dany a lift to Jon’s creek house and Dany felt it strange that the pastor would let his wife drive. Her father wouldn’t have approved of that, not the way Dany remembered him.

There must have been a hundred people all milling about in their Sunday clothes under a linen canopy to protect them from the afternoon sun. A string quartet played in the corner between bundles of wildflowers. When we entered the festivities, Dany held onto her mother’s arm like Rhaella needed help to walk, but really it was Dany who needed help. She felt such anxiety being around all of these people at once, but especially the ones she could not recognize. 

Her eyes searched for Jon and soon found him dressed in a grey suit and tie. He looked like a new man, clean shaven and hair cropped and shaped. He looked smart like a college boy or a bible salesman. 

Rhaella noticed her daughter staring and said “He cleans up nice, doesn’t he?”

“I’m thirsty,” replied Dany, but she did not wish to leave her mother’s side. 

“You don’t look well,” Rhaella replied. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. We should find our way back home.”

Dany wanted to agree, but before she could, a strong voice was calling out her name. When Dany turned toward it, a young woman of height was barreling into her, hugging Dany’s petite frame with ferocity. 

“I’m so happy you came!” exclaimed the girl, just a few years younger than Dany but already with a shiny gold band around her ring finger. Dany noticed it immediately, along with the vibrant red of the girl’s hair and her striking blue eyes. 

“Have we met?” asked Dany.

The girl’s countenance faltered for a moment before she smiled brightly and announced that her name was Sansa Stark. “I’m Jon’s cousin,” she said brightly. “I’m sorry for attacking you. I’ve just heard so much about you, I feel as though we’re old friends.”

Frowning, Dany glanced back at her mother who looked equally concerned about Sansa’s abrupt behavior. Jon appeared just then, putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder and giving her a pointed look as if to scold her for being so forward. 

“I’m sorry,” begged Sansa. “I’ve had too much to drink. Please forgive me. My little sister is getting married!”

Some within earshot clapped at Sansa’s exclamation and Dany’s cheeks went flush from all the eyes turning toward her. 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa repeated morosely and then wrapped her arms around Dany once more in an embrace that lingered like she was afraid to let go. When she finally did, she took Dany’s face in her hands and whispered “We miss you.”

“Alright, Sansa,” Jon said, taking her by the shoulder and walking her off until she was in the arms of another man, her husband. 

Jon came right back, apologizing to both women for his cousin’s intoxication. “She’s just very excited.”

“Does she know me?” Dany asked with a roughness to her tone, so far displeased with this whole event. 

“She thinks she knows everyone,” Jon said with a brush of his hand through the air. “I’m glad you could come, though. You look stunning. . . both of you.”

Dany’s arms prickled from the compliment.

“I think we’re gonna begin soon, so why don’t you find a seat. I’ll look for you afterward.” With that, Jon went off to have a conversation with the pastor and Dany turned to her mother. 

“Do you wish to stay?” asked Rhaella apprehensively. 

After a moment’s thought, Dany decided “It would be rude if we left now.”

The ceremony was short, as most weddings are, and although Dany did not know the bride or groom, she felt warm in the heart as she witnessed the procession. Such a young lady, Dany thought of the bride. So untraditional in her short, shapeless dress and short hair pinned behind her ears. She looked not a day older than nineteen if Dany were to guess and she was petite too, like Dany. Dany could see the resemblance between her and Jon with their dark features and rebellious smiles. Dany was truly happy for this girl. 

After the “I do’s” was the feast and then dancing, but Dany wasn’t one for feasts or for dancing. She left her mother with the Tyrell’s and wandered into Jon’s little white house in search of a washroom. She took her time in front of the mirror fixing her hair and her makeup, adjusting the string of pearls around her neck and making sure her ivory dress was free of wrinkles. 

When she exited, an older woman was coming down the narrow hallway and Dany stepped aside, into an adjacent doorway to give the woman space. Finding that she was now in a bedroom, Dany’s curiosity pulled her farther inside. 

It felt inappropriate to be alone in another person’s bedroom, let alone a man’s bedroom, but somehow that did not deter Dany as she studied the wallpaper and the rug and the handmade dresser. It looked like one she used to own, one her father had built for her, but she had no idea what had become of it, only that it had been replaced by a gaudy wardrobe Dany didn’t quite approve of. She traced her fingers around the embellished edges until her eyes fell to a figurine which was perched atop a few leather-bound books. 

_Great Expectations_ , _Wuthering Heights_ , and _The Age of Innocence_. 

What a peculiar selection, Dany pondered, that a farm hand should be reading Dickens, Bronte and Wharton.

The figurine was white porcelain. An angel with long hair and wings, hands pressed together in prayer. Hooked around the pointed edge of her wing was a thin gold wedding band, encrusted with three square diamonds. She slid it onto her ring finger like it was the most natural thing to do and tried to picture what it would be like to wear one of these for the rest of her life. It gave her a chill that would not subside until she removed it. She then read the engraving on the inside. _Love Eternally, 1932_.

It brought tears to Dany’s eyes. How cruel of her to have had the simple thought to put the ring on her own finger when it belonged to another, dead as the woman may be. 

She set the ring carefully back upon the angel’s wing and stepped away from the dresser. Her eyes fell to the bed. They would have slept together there. Jon and his wife. Dany had never even kissed a boy let alone slept in the same bed as one. It sounded obscene and yet often Dany would toss and turn at night until she brought a thick pillow against her chest under the blankets that she could hold and nestle her nose against. She thought she might rather enjoy sleeping against a man, but she could not fathom ever going through with such a reckless act until her wedding night. Dany wondered if Jon had waited until his wedding night to share a bed as his wife. The thought made her blush. 

The room certainly leaned feminine in design. It was more like her own bedroom than what she would imagine a man’s would look like. His wife’s doing, Dany assumed. If her father had had his way, his and Rhaella’s bedroom would have been all cow hides, bear furs and deer’s heads. What laid atop Jon’s bed was a quilt made from some of the most beautiful fabrics Dany had seen. Mostly florals and soft colors that soothed her spirit. She pinched the hem between her fingers and examined the stitching. 

“There you are,” spoke Jon’s voice from the doorway, startling Dany. She dropped the quilt and stepped away, hands going behind her back like she’d been caught doing something reprehensible. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I came to use the washroom and. . . I was looking at your quilt. I know how to make quilts like this, but the stitching here is so precise. I don’t think I could make one this fine.”

“I think you could,” Jon said with a small smile. 

Dany relaxed a bit when she saw he wasn’t cross with her. “Your home is lovely, Jon. Your wife had a lot to do with the decorating, I see.”

Jon’s smile faded. 

“I’m sorry. I’m such a snoop,” Dany said. “I noticed the ring on the dresser. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Dany. You don’t need to apologize.”

It hadn’t even registered in her mind that she was alone with a man in his bedroom. A widower maybe, but he was still single, as was she. Her father certainly would not have approved, but Dany paid that no mind. She felt comfortable where she was, as strange as it was for her to admit. 

“I noticed you have a piano in your front room,” she said. “I didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” he replied. “I mean, someone was teachin’ me, but I wasn’t very good. Actually, I was pretty terrible. These hands weren’t made for music, I suppose.” He smiled then. “I know you’re really talented. I can hear you play sometimes through your livin’ room window.”

She had always wondered if Jon could hear her playing. It made her happy to know he had. 

“I wrote a song recently.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It got me thinking about something you told me.”

“What’s that?” 

“Well. . .” Her eyes moved about the room, unsure of why she was even telling this to Jon. It wasn’t just the room that brought Dany comfort, though. It was Jon himself standing in that room with her. “You were telling me about being in love and what it feels like. I think that love might be a lot like music. The song began as a small sequence of notes playing over and over in my head until that grew and grew into something much more. And it made me sick, like you said, because I was so terrified that what I was hearing in my head wouldn’t sound the same in reality. I refused to ever play it I was so unsure. But then, one day, I just _did_. And it was right. Not perfect, but it was right. And each time I played it, it sounded more and more right. I may not have ever been in love with someone like you have, but I know I’ve felt love, because I feel it through my music.”

Jon stared at her for so long, she feared she’d offended him. Certainly, no tune could compare to a living breathing person, but Dany longed for him to know that she was not incapable of all he had described. She was not stone-hearted. She was not as cold as she would often present herself to him.

Eventually, Jon asked “Will you play it for me?”

The question, no matter how gentle, felt scandalous to Dany, like he was asking so much more of her than she could possibly give him. But she wanted so badly to try. 

They left the bedroom and Jon followed her to the piano that sat against the wall opposite the red front door that hung open for guests of the wedding to access easily. Dany sat upon the bench and positioned her feet atop the peddles underneath while placing her fingers in the proper formation atop the cool surface of the keys. Jon sat in a chair just beside the piano, oriented toward Dany so that he could watch her play the way he hadn’t in so long. 

After a soft sigh, Dany began.

Mere seconds into the song, Jon had to close his eyes so as not to break down. It was like emerging from a dark, damp tunnel he’d been walking through for months and finally feeling the sunlight on his skin. It was like that first sip of water after days of dehydration. 

When his eyes opened, Dany was still playing and he looked to the front doorway to see his newly-married cousin, Arya, and her sister, Sansa, watching with tears in their eyes. Rhaella was there also, and she knew the song so well that she could pinpoint its end. Just before Dany’s fingers stopped playing, Rhaella ushered the young women away.

“What did you think?” asked Dany nervously. 

Jon lowered his head and wiped at his eyes with his coat sleeve. “It’s beautiful.”

“Don’t cry.” Her hand went to his cheek before she could even register what she was doing and swiped away a tear with her thumb. “It’s not supposed to be sad.”

“I know.”

She pulled her hand way, embarrassed. 

“What’s it called?” he asked. 

“I’m no good at titles, but I’ve been calling it Dreams of Spring.”

He smiled. “Why Spring?”

“I don’t know. It’s my favorite season, I suppose. When I think of Spring, I think of happiness. It’s meant to be a happy song.”

“I think that title suits it.”

“Jon? Would you want to go for a walk with me before it’s dark?”

It would be another hour before it would get too dark to see. Jon brought a lantern with them just in case. Dany felt bad pulling him away from the festivities, but he kept insisting it was alright. 

“I just don’t feel comfortable being around so many people at one time,” she confessed as they walked side by side along the edge of the dirt path toward the creek. “Maybe it will make me sound cold, but I find people to be too friendly most of the time. My mother says it’s because they all known me better than I know them, because of the accident. I suppose I should be more cognizant of that.” 

“I get uncomfortable around so many people, too,” Jon replied. “More people around, more chances for somethin’ to go wrong, I always thought. That might be the orphan in me talkin’. Got too used to being on my own, it became a struggle not to be. But, then I met. . .” 

“Your wife?”

“Yeah. She made me realize I never wanted to be alone again.”

They reached the creek where night came earlier and Jon was glad he’d brought the lantern. Out on the dock it wasn’t so bad, though. Dany sat on the edge, took her shoes off, hiked her dress up to her knees and dangled her feet in the water. Jon sat behind her and reclined on the dock, tucking his hands under his head for something soft to rest on. His eyes were trained up at Dany and the way the last vestiges of sunlight made her skin glow. 

“I think I’m going to die alone,” Dany suddenly said, so matter of fact Jon nearly laughed. 

“Why would you think that?”

Kicking her feet about the water, Dany replied “Because I’m almost twenty-five and have never even kissed a boy. I think that’s a pretty clear sign that no one is ever going to want to marry me.”

“Well that’s not true,” Jon said with a half-smile. “You told me about your first kiss a long while ago. You just can’t remember.”

Eyebrows furrowing, Dany snapped a wild look down at Jon. “What? When? Who did I kiss?”

“It was a little over four years ago, I think. Some tractor salesman that came by to pitch your father. You said he had big shoulders, was about 30-years-old, and talked with a foreign accent.”

“A tractor salesman?” Dany was aghast. Horrified. “Why would I kiss a 30-year-old tractor salesman?”

Jon laughed hardily at her mortified expression. “I don’t know, Dany. It was before we met.”

“What did my father do?”

“I don’t think he ever knew.”

Dany held her palm over her mouth, reeling from such a disturbing image as her locking lips with some random, older man. 

“Don’t worry,” Jon said, sitting up and resting a hand on her shoulder. “It was just a kiss.”

“That you know of,” Dany retorted. “What if I was a. . . a _trollop_?”

“You weren’t.”

“Maybe I was! Maybe I’m not even a virgin and I just can’t remember!”

Jon let his eyes close while he took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve told you.”

After a minute, Dany calmed and shook her head toward the water. “No, I’m glad you told me. At least now I know what sort of a person I grew up to be.”

“Dany, you’re the same person now as you were then.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I just do. And you’re not gonna die alone, you hear me? You could have any guy in the world. I guarantee that when you kissed that tractor salesman, it was the best day of his life.”

Cheeks turning pink, Dany turned her body toward Jon so that they were eye to eye and she asked “Would you kiss me?”

His eyes widened and his throat went dry. After a cough, he asked “Why would you want to kiss me?”

“Well, you said I’ve already kissed someone, but I can’t remember any of it. I want to know what it’s like. It wouldn’t mean anything.”

Jon looked at her for a long while, mulling the proposal over as if a single kiss could change everything for the better, or worse. 

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine,” Dany insisted abruptly, turning away from him with a roughness to her voice. 

At that, Jon stood and held out his hand for Dany to take. Apprehensively, Dany placed her hand in his and Jon helped her to her feet. The sun had almost fully descended. They stood now in a haze of blueish-gray. The air had turned chilly and goosebumps prickled up and down Dany’s arms. 

“Here,” Jon softly said, removing his jacket and draping it around Dany’s shoulders. Jon was not a large man, but on Dany’s petite frame, the jacket consumed her. He stood so close to her she could smell the pomade from his hair, such a clean scent. It made her think of a waterfall in the middle of Winter. “Close your eyes,” he said. 

She did, but as soon as the air shifted before her, she blinked them open and leaned back. “Wait,” she said. “I’m scared.”

“If you don’t want to do this –”

“No, I want to. I just. . . I can’t close my eyes.”

“Okay. Just relax.”

She did, straightening back up and taking a long inhale and exhale to calm her nerves. “Do I have to do anything?”

“No. Just relax.” He lifted his hands carefully to either side of her head, resting gingerly there, his finger tips dipping between soft locks of her hair. His thumbs grazed the skin of her temples. 

Looking into his eyes, Dany swallowed hard and then his forehead came to rest against hers. He seemed hard of breath and Dany’s hand came to flatten against his chest to feel that his heart was beating erratically. Her eyes fluttered shut and just a moment later his hands were tilting her head up and the subtle pressure of soft lips connecting with her own was like an electric shock to her own heart.

Hand clenched in Jon’s polyester dress shirt, she held him there as he held her with his hands sliding down to her jaw. She opened her mouth to breathe and he dipped his tongue past her lips. He tasted of vanilla cake and strawberries. A needy little moan escaped Dany’s throat as she kissed Jon so desperately. 

A hand dropped to her waist and Jon held more than just her mouth to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood up on her wet toes. 

Dany kissed him like they were underwater and she needed the air from his lungs just to survive. His coat fell from her shoulders, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel all of him against all of her. She wanted him everywhere around her, touching every inch at once, and everywhere inside of her. 

How could he have loved before me? she thought.

How could he have married before he had let himself find me? she thought.

How could he have lain with another when he was built for me? she thought. 

The direction her mind and body were leading her startled Dany so suddenly she pried herself from him harshly. Her lips were as swollen and wet as she was between her legs and she was convinced the devil had gotten into her to make her yearn so profoundly for this young man she hardly knew. 

“Dany –” he began, fear in his eyes for what she might be feeling. 

“I have to go,” she said quickly, chest heaving and out of breath. She dipped down to grab her shoes and was bolting off toward the wedding before she even put them on her feet. 

Jon, helpless and heartbroken, could only watch her as she did. 

* * * * *

That night, so late that it was nearly the next morning, Rhaella awoke with a strange sensation and went to check on her daughter. She found Dany on her knees in the middle of the study, eyes closed and palms together before her, facing the golden crucifix her husband had displayed proudly there. 

“Dany,” she spoke through her sleepy voice. “What are you doing up?” She lowered to her knees beside her daughter and laid a hand upon her shoulder. 

A sullen sigh escaped Dany as she blinked her moist eyes open and lowered her hands. “I have evil inside of me,” she murmured. 

“What? Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true. That’s why God punished me.”

These dark words shook Rhaella from her half-sleep state and she turned Dany to look at her rather than the carved Jesus upon the cross. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

“The accident,” she explained. “I’m a sinner and God punished me so I would learn, but I haven’t.”

“Honey, you fell off a horse and hit your head. That was not God doing and you’re not a sinner.”

“About four years ago, did a man ever come over to the house to try and sell father a tractor?”

Rhaella’s eyebrows furrowed and she looked at her daughter like she’d gone completely mad. “I don’t know. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Earlier, at the wedding, I kissed Jon Snow.”

Face softening, Rhaella almost let a smile slip, but Dany looked absolutely distraught over it in a way she’d never seen before. She smoothed her hand up and down her daughter’s arm. “Honey, that’s alright.”

“It’s not,” insisted Dany, bowing her head in shame. 

“You’re old enough to kiss whoever you want.”

“It wasn’t just a kiss, though,” she confessed so quiet, Rhaella had to bow her own head to hear the rest. “I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want that to be it. I wanted more. Father would be so ashamed of me.”

“Stop that,” Rhaella said firmly. She tucked her finger under Dany’s chin and lifted it to say what she needed to say while looking into her eyes. “I’m telling you, Daenerys, it’s alright. Whatever happened – whatever you wished had happened – it’s alright. I’m not ashamed of you, your father looking down on us is not ashamed of you, and God wouldn’t be ashamed of you either.”

“You cannot know that,” insisted Dany, a fresh tear streaming down her cheek and dripping from her chin. “You don’t believe in God. You don’t know.”

“I believe in you,” stated Rhaella, her voice dripping with all the love she had for her sweet daughter. “You are a good person. You’re a beautiful person and there is not an ounce of you that I’m not proud of. You have so much love in your heart, baby. It’s okay to let it out every now and again.”

Dany fell against her mother and held onto her like she would when she was girl. It was true, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t get the words out over her sobs. It was true that all that darkness inside of her that was threatening to swallow her whole was just that, love. How cruel that love could feel like dying, but isn’t that what Jon had told her it would be like?

“Come to bed,” Rhaella whispered into her ear. 

When her tears subsided and her body grew numb with agony and sleep deprivation, Dany shook her head and rolled onto the floor, spreading out on the rug with her arms outstretched. “I just need to lie here for a little longer, where it smells of father.”

Defeated, Rhaella stood and disappeared down the hall to return a minute later to tuck a pillow beneath Dany’s head and drape a blanket over her thin form.

Dany drifted in and out of sleep that night, but most of the time she lay staring at the dark ceiling. A panel of black just waiting to fall down upon her. She wished it would. At dawn, she moved to her own bedroom and puttered about, straightening things up here and there, even things that didn’t need straightening. She was waiting for Jon to arrive and when he did, Dany sat upon her bed and stared out the second-floor window as he started on his daily duties. She did nothing more but watch him and think about all the things she felt on that dock. 

How could he have done this to me? she wondered. 

How could he have held me like that and kissed me like that in the wake of his true love’s passing? she wondered. 

How could he have been so kind and so patient only to inject his venom into me to make me love him despite all logic? she wondered. 

For hours she did this. Staring and watching and wondering, until mid-day when Rhaella usually invited Jon in for tea and biscuits. By this time, Dany had had enough and she was resolved to put an end to it. 

She marched down the stairs and into the kitchen. Both heads turned to her and she almost faltered under Jon’s dark gaze, but she kept her eyes trained on Rhaella. “Mother,” she began sternly. “I would like a word with you alone, please.”

After a few moments of awkward silence, both stood from the kitchen table. Jon grabbed his hat and said he’d go take the new mare out for a ride. He walked past, but stopped just beside Dany and gently asked “Are you alright?”

Taking a step away from him, Dany glared but refused to meet his eye. “Don’t touch me,” she demanded of him, though his hands never entered her space. 

He struggled to leave then. He stood paralyzed with fear, though his face remained stoic as he looked over Dany as if it might be the last time he’d ever do so. There were so many words on the tip of his tongue, words that he’d longed to say from the moment she awoke after her accident, but he’d promised himself he would stick to his plan until the very end, even if it failed. It would be easier this way. Not for him – no, it would be much worse for him – but it would be better for Dany, and that was all he cared about. 

And so, he left. 

“What’s the matter?” Rhaella asked, stunned and confused. 

“I want you to fire him,” stated Dany with earnest, arms folded across her chest and shoulders square. 

“What? Why?”

“I don’t want him here anymore. He’s just a farm hand. You fire and hire farm hands all the time.”

“I need a reason, Dany.”

“The reason is that this is our farm and our home and he does not belong here.” Her voice was raising and her composure was faltering. “I cannot be around him. I cannot have him here, mother. I simply cannot.”

Rhaella crossed the kitchen and took Dany’s shoulders into her hands only to have Dany pulled forcefully away. “What has come over you, Daenerys? First, you’re up all night praying because you think God hates you for wanting to kiss Jon, and now you’re demanding that I fire him? I’m not going to.”

“Why can’t you just do as I ask?!” shouted Dany, all those emotional left over from the night before bubbling over once more. “It isn’t fair, mother! I wake up one morning and I’m not a teenager anymore, but twenty-four, and have nothing to show for it except an ugly scar behind my head! My father is dead and I don’t even remember his final years in which you speak so reverently! Everyone in town looks at me like I’m a freak! You think I’m so pathetic you try to hand me off to a farm hand just so can make me. . .”

Her words ended when a sob croaked from her throat and she dropped her face into her hands, turning from her mother in shame. 

“What?” asked Rhaella in a panic. “What did he make you do?”

Dany’s head shook rapidly and Rhaella once more took hold of her shoulders. 

“Look at me, Daenerys,” she commanded and her daughter obeyed, moving her hands and casting her big wet eyes into her mother’s. “I want you to tell me this instant what is going on with you. What did Jon make you do?”

“Oh, mother,” Dany murmured. “I’m afraid I’m in love with him.”

All the air left Rhaella’s lungs. “How could you scare me like this, Dany?”

“Mother, I can’t love him. Father always said he wanted to see me matched with someone from a good family, someone of means, someone with standing. And there’s no reason for me to love Jon, anyway. I look at him and I feel all these things that make so sense. When I’m around him, I’m at a loss of breath. Every word he speaks, every look in my direction, consumes me. I feel trapped by him, possessed by him, like he’s casted a spell over me. I don’t know what to do except to have you fire him so that I can finally be free.”

Rhaella breathed a laugh, bringing her hands down to grasp Dany’s tightly. 

“Why are you laughing at me?” asked Dany at once. 

“Oh, darling, we’ve done all of this before. You there, me here, your father sitting just there. You were so frightened to tell us, you kept everything bottled up so long until it finally erupted all over the kitchen floor just as it’s doing now.”

“What are you saying, mother?”

“Nearly four years ago, your father hired a young man to come work on our farm. He’d just purchased a ramshackle little house by the creek but had no money left to fix it up. You hated him then, too, at first, but then you slowly came to like him, though you still pretended otherwise. I think your father and I could see it before you even did. It wasn’t you who wanted Jon fired then. It was your father. Jon had been a hard worker, but he was always staring at our sweet daughter and, at the time, Aerys couldn’t fathom you marrying below yourself.”

Dany struggled for each breath as her mother spoke. 

“And when you found out he had sent Jon away, it was like a switch flipped. Your face turned white like all the blood had left your body and you collapsed right onto the floor in front of us. I held you in my arms and you cried. You thought that since Jon had been fired, he would leave town in search of other work and it devastated you. You told me you were in love with him, that you would ride with him to the creek after church, that you would kiss him, that you wanted to be with him. You told us all of this like we would have had you flogged for it. You were so ashamed of your own feelings just like you are now, and it broke my heart.

“I didn’t want to do this, Dany. I wanted to tell you everything that very first night you had finally awoken, but you were in a haze of pain and confusion. You had a panic attack when you found out it was 1934. You thought it was still the Summer after high school. You thought your father was still with us. You knew nothing of your home or your life. We agreed that you should move back here and –”

“We?” squeaked Dany. 

“Jon and I. We agreed not to tell you the rest. The doctor said there was a chance you’d regain your memories over time, but it never happened. I’m sorry we lied, baby. It’s been so hard, on Jon more than anyone. I can’t fire him, Dany, because he doesn’t work for me. He stopped being our farm hand a long time ago.” 

Dany tugged her hands free of her mother’s and pressed them instead to her center chest as if to physically keep her heart from breaking through the skin as the muscle pounded so fiercely. “Oh my God,” she muttered breathlessly, all the pieces finally fitting together in her fractured mind, and then, as if her skirt had suddenly caught fire, Dany ran. 

The front door swung open and she flew down the porch steps, bounding across the pasture, eyes and head turning rapidly all around in search of –

She stopped. A small spec coming over the bend grew larger and larger until Dany knew it was Jon atop the new mare. She lifted an arm and waved it from side to side. She threw her other arm up and waved that one in unison until the spec grew larger and larger at a much faster rate. The earth quivered with each thunderous stride the large steed took until Jon was pulling on the reins and circling Dany with a look of bewilderment. She looked like she’d been crying.

“Your wife isn’t dead, is she?!” Dany called up to him. 

After a moment, Jon replied simply. “No.”

Hand covering her mouth, Dany shook her head at her predicament.

“Dany –”

“Will you take me to the house?” she asked. 

Jon dropped his arm down and Dany grasped it without hesitation. He swung her onto the back of the saddle and when her arms were tightly circled around his middle, he kicked the mare into a gallop. They sped to the creek house like they were running a race and Dany pressed her cheek to the back of Jon’s shoulder and kept it there the whole ride. 

They arrived as the Summer winds were blowing fiercely and Jon tied the mare up to a post out front his home. The door was unlocked. Dany went right in like she was on a mission. She went straight for the piano. Her piano. There was sheet music perched on the stand where there hadn’t been the day before. They were of all her favorite songs, the ones she’d grown up playing and ones her tutor had just begun teaching her. One page stood out among the rest, though – written at the top, in her own cursive writing, were the words “Our Song.” Tracing the handwritten notes with her fingertips, Dany was in awe of the accuracy. It was her song. Their song. _Dreams of Spring._

“We were married in the Spring, two years and five months ago,” Jon’s voice spoke from the front doorway. Dany spun around as he shut the door, silencing the room until he added “You played that at our wedding.”

With a calmness that made Jon wary, Dany laid the pages down on the piano bench and moved fluidly down the narrow hallway and into the bedroom. Her bedroom. Their bedroom. Jon followed silently, fixed to accept whatever may become of this. 

“These are my books, aren’t they?” asked Dany, running her fingertips over the spines of the novels atop the dresser. 

“Yes,” answered Jon. 

“And this is my ring,” asked Dany, too afraid to touch the gold band that hung from the angel’s wing.

“Yes,” answered Jon.

“This dresser –”

“Yours.”

“The quilt?”

“You made it.”

She shuddered and turned then to study the man before her in the sunlight streaming in through their bedroom window. He wore his brown suspenders and brown boots. His shirt was unbuttoned to his mid-chest and his hairline was damp with perspiration, eyes damp with worry. 

Dany took a sudden spin around in the room. She began opening and closing all the dresser drawers in a flurry, then fumbling through the rolltop desk in the corner and finally rummaging through the boxes underneath the bed. 

“Dany –” tried Jon, but she’d found what she was looking for – something she hadn’t even known she was looking for. 

Hidden among scraps of embroidered fabric and quilt squares was a large, leather-bound book. Dany dropped to her knees, sat back on her heels and opened the book across her legs. As Jon took careful steps toward her, she gazed upon the photographs that were affixed to the thick pages. They were all of Dany and Jon, together on the farm, together in her home, together at the creek, together at the church where she wore fine white lace from neck to toe and Jon a black suit with tails. 

“I thought you didn’t like the church,” she murmured, eyes welling with emotion. 

“I liked it when I was with you,” replied Jon. “Not after the accident, though. It was too hard then.”

There were photos of them with her family, too – with Dany’s father and mother and even one of just Jon and her father, fishing on the dock just as Jon described. There were photos of them with Jon’s family – his cousins from yesterday’s wedding posed with Dany looking more like a third sister to the women than anything else. 

“You’re my husband,” breathed Dany, slowly closing the book in her lap and placing it back in the box which it came. 

“Yes,” answered Jon. 

“I’m your wife.”

“Yes.”

She stood. “You love me.”

He nodded, the motion shaking a tear loose. “Yes.”

“I love you,” said Dany, taking a step toward him. 

Jon’s head bowed and shook in disagreement. “You don’t remember me.”

“No.” She picked his head up in her hands and swiped away his tears with her thumbs, his skin so smooth and slick. “I don’t remember meeting you, or falling for you, or marrying you, or sleeping with you, or living with you, but I remember loving you. I remember that I love you. I just didn’t know why until now. It’s because I’m meant to. I’m so sorry that I left you.”

Choking on a sob, Jon tried to turn his head away, but Dany’s hands wouldn’t let him. She needed him to see it in her eyes as much as she needed him to hear it in her voice. She needed him to feel it from every piece of her. 

“You never left me, though.”

“I couldn’t,” he mouthed. 

“I’m never going to leave you again.”

His head shook again, and his hands circled around her wrists. “Don’t say that.”

“I belong here.”

“Only if you want to.”

“Jon,” she whispered. “I love you. This is where I belong. I’ve been feeling it for so long, but I thought I was crazy.”

He took her in his arms then, holding her tight and burying his nose in her sweet smelling hair. She pressed kisses to his neck and ran her fingertips across his scalp. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she would breath into his ear.

“It’s not your fault, baby,” he insisted softly, picking his head up to plant kisses to her temple and forehead. 

Turning her head up, Dany caught Jon’s lips in a slow kiss, then asked “What if I never get my memories back?”

“It’s alright,” replied Jon, kissing her once more. “We can make new memories.”

The heat wave left Wyoming that evening as the sun slowly dipped behind the trees, casting their bedroom in a soft golden glow. Dany clung to Jon as he did her. A second honeymoon of one long embrace until they would have to return to the farm to deliver Rhaella back her mare and to assure her of Dany’s safety after she so abruptly fled the property. But Dany would sleep in her own bed that night, under her quilt and wearing her golden ring, beside her husband who felt so much better pressed against her than a pillow. 

Despite their legal matrimony, Dany felt wicked allowing herself these intimate pleasures with Jon and told him sincerely amid their sweet kisses that she could not give her body wholly to him until they renewed their vows before the Lord in His house. 

Jon agreed absolutely. He had waited seven months wondering if his wife would ever come back to him. He could wait a little longer to feed his carnal desires. Drifting off to sleep with his arms around her, Jon found his absolution. He no longer had to hurt for her. 

As for Dany, lying awake to revel in Jon’s gentle breaths against her neck, her mind may not remember her marriage vows, but her body did, and it craved her lawful husband. Soon, Dany thought, and until then, she would hurt for him.

**THE END**


End file.
